In establishing the framework for America’s political institutions, the authors of the Constitution were both liberals (that is, partisans of individual liberty) and republicans (advocates of government accountable to the people). As well, they sought to promote the development of commerce, not only for the sake of enhancing the people’s standard of living and providing work for all, but also because the variety of interests that commerce promotes offers a security against the sort of class-based politics (rich vs. poor) that had torn previous republics (from ancient Athens and Rome to modern Florence) apart.
But contrary to the claims of some Progressive historians and politicians, the Founders’ desire to promote commerce does not mean that they were mere materialists, who aimed only to promote the economic interests of the wealthy, or who thought that the mutual checking of people’s individual or class interests would suffice to protect the people’s liberties. Rather, while recognizing (as Hamilton puts it in Federalist no. 73) that “stern virtue is the growth of few soils,” hence the need for institutional checks and balances, they also acknowledged, as Madison observes at the end of Federalist no. 55, that “republican government presupposes the existence” of civic virtue among the populace more than “any other form,” given that such a system relies less on coercion, and more on the people’s public-regardingness and private morality, than despotic forms do. In harmony with Madison’s argument, George Washington in his Farewell Address emphasized the need to encourage religious belief as a necessary foundation of popular morality.
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